He had hanging from his neck a cocoa-nut, very finely carved, contrived as a flask, with a silver neck, and he seemed rather proud of it. He passed it to me, and I drank a little poor white wine from it with great enjoyment; I returned the cocoa-nut to him.
“To the health of the King!” he said as he drank; “he made me an officer of the Legion of Honour, it is only fair that I should follow him to the frontier. Indeed, as I have only my epaulette to live by, I shall afterwards resume command of my battalion, it is my duty.”
So speaking, as if to himself, he started his little mule once more, saying that we had no time to lose; and, as I was of his opinion, I set off again along with him. I looked at him continually without questioning him, never having cared for the indiscreet chatter so common amongst us.
We went on without speaking for about a quarter of a league. As he stopped then to give a rest to his little mule, which it pained me to see, I stopped too and tried to squeeze from my riding-boots the water which filled them, as if they were two wells in which my legs had been soaked.
“Your boots are beginning to stick to your feet,” he said.
“I have not had them off for four nights,” I told him.
“Pooh! in a week you won’t notice it,” he rejoined in his hoarse voice; “it is something to be alone, you know, in times like those we live in. Do you know what I have in there?”
“No,” I said.
“A woman.”
I said “Oh!” without too much surprise, and marched on calmly, at a walking pace. He followed me.